Charles Bernard Gibson

“ I am no enemy of reform in our political institutions. All I insist on is, that great social questions should take the precedence of purely political questions. The last Reform Bill may turn out a very good, or bad, or indifferent measure, for anything I know; but I do not see how any new arrangement of the franchise will give constant employment, wholesome food, good raiment, and comfortable houses to the poor people of this country. ”

“ The only rational, true, and fair way of raising wages, is to relieve an over-stocked labor-market by emigration.
Just before the famine commenced in Ireland, for every day's work there was to do in that country, there were three men to do it, which gave to each laborer two days' work, on an average, in the week. This produced such a competition among the laborers to get work, that wages were reduced to a minimum, upon which it was impossible for the laborer to exist. ”

“ Bear in mind, there were nearly nine millions in Ireland when the famine commenced, and that there are now—notwithstanding the natural increase of the population—only five millions and a half.
A Grecian philosopher defined man an "unfledged biped." If I were asked to define an Irishman, and to give what logicians call the "essential difference" between him and an Englishman, I should style him an emigrating unfledged biped. For one Englishman who has spoken to me on the subject of emigration, I have had twenty Irishmen. An Irishman, though unfledged, thinks nothing of crossing the Atlantic ”

“ There is an impression among labor-masters that an over-stocked labor market is for the advantage of the employer. This was found to be a mistake in Ireland, where low wages and insufficient food so deteriorated the working man, that he was not able to give an equivalent for even the low wages received, to say nothing of the idle habits engendered by the want of regular employment. ”

“ In Wales it is stated by competent witnesses, that "instances of gross depravity, through the girls coming in contact with the male sex at their work, were frequent." In Scotland, we are informed, the females so employed are "as clean and tidy as the nature of their work will allow," but that "there is something abhorrent in seeing them begrimed with dust, and placed in the way of temptations which might lead to immorality." ”

“ But how many who have come up to London, under the impression, like Whittington, that its streets are paved with gold, are miserably disappointed! But, notwithstanding, here they stay, till the bloom of the country fades from their cheek, with the belief that, in so great and rich a city, they cannot possibly starve ”

“ I also did my utmost to promote the same object; and in the end we succeeded in getting the sentence of fifteen years transportation reduced to six years and nine months of penal servitude. For my efforts on his behalf he was sincerely grateful, and endeavoured to show his gratitude to me in the only way in which he could show it—by curbing his unruly temper, and keeping out of trouble and the "punishment cells," and by exhibiting an attentive and becoming religious deportment. ”

“ They still further imitated the men by working in a state of semi-nudity, and by being subjected to regulations of the most stringent nature. As a rule, the wages received by them were lower than those obtained by the men, a circumstance which sufficiently accounted for the demand for their services. When these facts became fully known to the public, much indignation was expressed on the subject, and ultimately an Act of Parliament was passed, prohibiting the employment of women and children in mines and collieries. ”

“ But if they imagine we are going to send them "bone and muscle" only, they will find themselves disappointed. Our object should be to emigrate whole families: to send out only the head of the family has not been found to work well. Men sometimes forget that they have left wives and children behind them, who become a permanent burden on the ratepayers.
EMIGRATION.
Emigration, or migration, is the natural necessity of an increasing population: men must either "move on," or stand in each other's way, and quarrel in the labor and food markets. ”

“ People without employment very soon lose their bone and muscle, and the only thing that remains in vigor is a hungry stomach. Relieve the labour market, give sufficient employment and fair wages to working men, and good food to their growing children, and you will have plenty of bone and muscle: only give room, and young oaks will grow up to supply the place of those that are removed. ”

“ Well, our young friend resolved to emigrate, and took his departure from Liverpool to New York, about six months ago. I heard of him soon after his arrival, and found he had done what I suspected he would do, that was, enlist in the Federal army. Perhaps it was his only chance. There is many a man in the Queen's livery who has worn the convict frieze and badge; I have known several. The Federal army contains as many Irish roughs as New York rowdies. ”

“ I have not much faith in societies or committees generally, but I feel that the great work of emigration, which will be increasing year by year in magnitude, cannot be done by individual effort, or by the East End Emigration Society. It demands a large and powerful constitution, such as would command the sympathy of the nation, and the support of Parliament,—in the shape of annual grants. The colonies would, of course, give their aid ”

“ Incredible as the fact may appear to some, it is nevertheless true that hundreds of females, habited as men, are to be found at the present day working on the pit banks in Wales, Scotland, Lancashire, and Staffordshire. ”

“ The humble petition of the undersigned, the inhabitants of Poplar, Limehouse, and the Isle of Dogs, humbly sheweth, that, for the last two years, there has been a great dearth of employment in the above-mentioned districts, and in the East of London generally; that an increasing dearth of employment, although not to the same extent, prevails throughout the whole of England. Your petitioners are of opinion that the English labor market is becoming over-stocked; that the enterprise and operations of the country are not keeping pace with the increase of the population ”

“ As it regards myself, I am first-rate in health, but very uncomfortable in many respects. It is now nearly two months since I slept with my clothes off. On some occasions we pass the night with our knapsacks on us—that is, the few who carry such a thing. ”

“ Some grand lessons are startling truths in political economy may be still dug up from the debris of the Irish famine. which English legislators would do well to study.
It taught the Irish nation a lesson, which they have never forgotten, and which they never will forget—and that is, that God has given the earth to man to be inhabited. But it was hard to teach the Irish people this lesson, for an Irishman loves his country just as much as an Englishman loves his. ”

“ Females of all ages, from the girl just entering her teens to the grey-haired matron of sixty, were found occupied in heavy drudgery in the long subterraneous passages which extended from the bottom of the pit-shafts. Of these females many were employed as miners, being furnished with lights, spades, and other necessaries of their craft, in emulation of the male workers. ”

“ You can buy things in Canada—where I should recommend the emigrant to go—as cheap as you can here. There, as Mr. Kitto will inform you, there is an emigration agency, for receiving emigrants, and drafting them on to those who require their services.
I should recommend you not to remain in or hang about large towns. Press on into the country: try and get farming work. Any man can dig, or cut down a tree; and, in farming work, women are as useful as men. If they are not able to milk a cow, they may feed a pig, and help to gather in the harvest ”

“ This gave general satisfaction to the public, and from that time the whole question faded gradually out of sight, few persons, not actually residing in the colliery districts, being aware of the extent to which female labour continued to be employed outside the pits. ”

“ Now, if Englishmen expect to do as much in the emigration line as Irishmen, they must take a leaf out of Pat's book. There is nothing better than light weights for a long run: the baggage of the Roman soldier was called impedementa, from which we have our word "impediment." Take all the money you can get, and no luggage that you can possibly do without. ”

“ The emigrant views emigration simply as the means of improving his own condition; the public are supposed to take a wider and more philosophical view of the subject—but I fear the public view is rather hazy and indistinct ”

“ Such a society could not fail to meet with support from the public generally. I here throw out the rough idea of a great Emigration Society for England, to be brought into shape by those who know more of the subject than I do. ”

“ A nice cool breeze has just sprung up, and our colours, the stars and stripes, are flying, inviting Johnny to try his skill in musketry. I belong to the 9th Army Corps, Burnside's." C. B. Gibson.
A REAL SOCIAL EVIL
Several years since the social and physical condition of the females employed in our mines and collieries formed the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry, when many painful and startling disclosures were made respecting the objectionable manner in which female labour was frequently employed in those places. ”

“ Winn and where we shall stop brick-making and building, I shall not venture to say, for the natural tendency of mankind appears to be to large towns, and the larger the town, the more powerful the attraction. ”

“ They are like a swarm of bees in early summer, toiling in the fields, beneath the sun. Now you may see them leading out the young, or distending the cells with liquid nectar, or receiving the burdens of those coming home ”

“ The poor English hind or agricultural labourer is greatly to be pitied, on account of the low wages he receives; but, as it respects the nature of his location and employment, he is to be envied by the town labourer, living in a garret in a dirty, narrow alley ”

“ The bird that will not leave its nest at the approach of winter, for more genial climes, will be shaken out of it by the storms of spring; the boy who would not come down from the tree by the application of a little gentle pressure, was "pelted heartily with stones." I do not think I overstate the number, when I say that three millions of Irish people have emigrated since the famine. ”

“ I sometimes look at the pale faces and reduced frames of the workmen that turn out of our large yards and workshops, and compare them with the navvies, fresh from the country, with their broad shoulders and muscular bodies, and cannot avoid the conclusion that we are paying a heavy fine in flesh, and bone, and muscle, for our superiority as workmen! ”

“ I have seen and known young women emigrating with new empty boxes; they like the new boxes, "for the sake of appearance," and they expect to fill them at the other side. If Pat goes unfledged, he has "an idea" that he will be able to feather his nest on the western side of the Atlantic. ”

“ There is no better place for starving in than London: you can manage it in a garret, right well. We have it recorded in Genesis, that God wrought a most extra-ordinary miracle, to overcome this tendency in mankind to congregate together in large towns: "And the Lord said, Behold, this people is one, and they have all one language ”

“ Valuable land, in the south-west of Ireland, was sold for a mere song. There is a story told, on good authority, of a gentleman who could not sell a small property, at any figure, offering it to a friend for nothing, and of the friend's declining the gift, when he discovered the amount of the poor rates. ”

“ These men divided their time between working for themselves and others; at one time chopping away with the ever-busy axe, at another hiring their labor to the neighbouring settlers, who were anxious to obtain their services. In the summer months they earned as much as enabled them to live during the winter, when they were hard at work at home, clearing and fencing ”

“ Don't be eternally mending your machine—tinkering and hammering at it, till you make two holes in stopping one—but work it; don't be all day sharpening your scythe, or your sickle, but put it in among the rich corn, for thousands and tens of thousands, in this country, are in a semi-starving state. ”

“ I have had to step over a green corpse, lying on the threshold, to get at a dying man inside. Sixty dead bodies, after one night, have been carted from the door of the Cork City Union; and, in some districts, the rates rose to double the rental. ”

“ The voice of the union may be powerful, and its laws as unchangeable as those of the Medes and Persians, but there is something stronger and more powerful still, and that is, the voice of children calling on a father for bread. The man may wish to be loyal to his union, but he must be true to nature ”

“ Now, here we have the first great attempt of man to contravene the intention of God, that he should enter upon and colonize the earth. God says, "Move forward, and possess the whole earth." Man says, "No ”